“Move away from the door.”
The pounding stopped.
Serena placed her palm against the painted wood.
“Can you hear me?”
Someone answered from inside, too quietly for Ezekiel to understand.
“I am going to open it,” she said. “Stand back.”
She waited until the footsteps retreated.
Then she pulled.
The lock held long enough to tear a strip from the frame. The door came toward her with a crack that sent someone inside crying out.
Serena set it against the wall.
Five people stood beneath a bare ceiling light.
For a moment, none of them moved.
A woman nearest the back had one arm around a younger woman’s shoulders. A man stood in front of them despite the difficulty he seemed to have remaining upright. Two others had pressed themselves into a corner beside a mattress.
Serena stepped away from the opening.
“You can leave.”
The man looked past her.
“Where are they?”
“In the front room.”
That did not reassure him.
Ezekiel appeared beside her with the woman they had already found.
“Lena,” she said.
The woman at the back lifted her head.
Her mouth opened, but no sound came.
Then she moved.
The two women met in the doorway, holding each other with a force that made Serena look away.
Ezekiel waited until they could hear him.
“There are people outside who can help.”
“Who?” the man asked.
“Crystal.”
Nobody seemed to know the name.
“She helped Mara,” Serena said.
Lena loosened her hold.
“Mara got out?”
“Yes.”
“Where is she?”
“Somewhere safe,” Ezekiel said. “She told us about you.”
Lena covered her mouth.
Behind them, something scraped across the floor of the front room.
Ezekiel turned.
Serena touched his good arm.
“Take them.”
He looked at her.
“I will follow.”
The man who had recognized her was trying to stand.
His gaze fixed on the open room behind Serena.
“You don’t understand.”
She crossed the distance between them.
He backed into the wall.
“Then explain.”
“I just work here.”
“You were holding a gun.”
He swallowed.
From the passage came Ezekiel’s voice, telling someone there was no need to hurry down the step. Serena could hear more than one person crying.
The man heard it too.
“What did you mean when you said ‘they’?”
He looked toward the far side of the room.
A door stood ajar there.
Serena followed his glance.
“You know what I am.”
“No.”
She let him see her teeth again.
He flinched.
“Yes,” she said. “You do.”
“I’ve seen pictures.”
“Of whom?”
“Not you.”
“Of whom?”
“I don’t know their names.”
Her hand closed around the front of his shirt.
He began speaking faster.
“People upstairs. They brought the cases. They showed us what to look for.”
“What people?”
“I don’t know.”
“You work here.”
“For Rocko.”
“And where is he?”
The man looked at the open door again.
This time Serena heard the movement beyond it.
She released him and turned.
Ezekiel got the first six people outside.
Crystal came forward from the car before he could call her name. Another woman followed with a bag of blankets, although the night was not especially cold.
Lena stopped at the sight of the open street.
Ezekiel knew that hesitation.
He had felt it beneath the building where Serena was held: the absurd suspicion that the doorway would somehow close again if he believed in it too quickly.
“You can keep going,” he told her.
She took a step.
Crystal caught his eye.
“How many?”
“Six here.”
“More inside?”
“Don’t know yet.”
A man beside Lena turned back.
“Upstairs.”
Ezekiel looked at him.
“There are rooms upstairs.”
“People?”
“I heard somebody. Last night.”
Crystal’s expression changed.
Ezekiel was already moving.
She caught his sleeve.
“Zeke.”
“I heard him.”
“You’re bleeding.”
He looked down.
A small red patch had appeared near the edge of his bandage.
“Keep them here.”
“Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“Act like you didn’t hear me.”
He met her eyes.
For a moment, the noise of the street seemed far away.
“I need to tell her.”
Crystal let go.
“Then tell her.”
Serena saw the weapon before she saw the man carrying it.
Its barrel was short and blunt, the dark metal scored by three pale grooves.
The sight brought Sabine’s room back with such force that she almost stopped moving.
Almost.
The first discharge struck the wall beside her.
Plaster burst outward. Something hot scored the side of her neck.
She hit the man before he could bring the weapon around again.
They struck the doorway together. His shoulder cracked against the frame, but he kept his grip. He drove the hard edge of the weapon against her cheek.
Pain flashed across her vision.
She caught his wrist.
He was stronger than the others.
That surprised her.
His face was older than Ezekiel’s, broad and close-shaven. He wore no hood, no ceremonial mark she recognized. His eyes moved over her with an ugly, practiced attention.
“Thought we missed one.”
Serena tightened her grip.
“Where?”
He tried to force the weapon upward.
“Where?”
His answer was a blow to her mouth.
She tasted her own blood.
Then she dragged his arm aside and bit him.
His shout filled the room.
Blood touched her tongue.
For a moment, the house, the street, even the man beneath her hands diminished around the need that had been growing since she woke on the table.
Warmth spread through her chest.
She had forgotten how hungry she was.
Or she had refused to know.
The man struggled. She held him against the frame, feeling each movement weaken.
Somewhere behind her, Ezekiel said her name.
She heard him.
She did not stop.
He had expected violence.
That was what troubled Ezekiel later.
He could not tell himself he had mistaken the purpose of coming here. He had watched Serena break the door and put grown men on the floor with almost no effort.
But this was different.
Her pale face was pressed against the man’s neck. Blood marked her mouth and the front of his shirt. One of his hands opened and closed against her shoulder while his heels dragged over the floor.
The weapon slipped from his fingers.
Ezekiel looked at it, then back at her.
“Serena.”
Her eyes lifted.
Red.
For a heartbeat, he could not make himself step closer.
Then he heard someone moving above them.
“There are people upstairs.”
Her gaze fixed on his.
The man in her hands sagged.
“Serena. We haven’t got everybody.”
She pulled away.
Blood shone against her lower lip.
She looked down at the man as though she had returned to a task whose shape had changed while she was away.
His chest moved.
Once.
Again.
She lowered him to the floor.
Ezekiel breathed.
Neither of them spoke.
Then Serena wiped her mouth with her sleeve.
“Show me.”
The stairs rose behind the door the armed man had entered.
Ezekiel stayed below while Serena climbed.
He hated the relief he felt when she went ahead.
He hated that he was relieved for two different reasons.
At the top, she paused.
“Someone is here.”
A muffled voice answered from behind a door.
Serena tried the handle, then broke the fastening.
This room contained two people.
A young man sat on the floor beside a woman whose ankle had swollen above her shoe. They recoiled when Serena entered.
She stopped at the threshold.
Only then did she remember the blood.
She wiped her face again, but there was too much of it on the sleeve to help.
“I am here to let you out.”
The young man looked toward the stairs.
“Who else is with you?”
“Ezekiel.”
As though that name ought to mean safety to anyone but her.
She moved aside.
“He is coming.”
The woman could not manage the stairs.
Serena asked before lifting her.
The woman looked at her slender arms, then at the young man beside her.
“I’m heavier than I look.”
“So am I,” Serena said.
It was a poor joke.
The woman gave a startled breath that might have become laughter on another night.
She nodded.
Serena carried her carefully.
Ezekiel followed with the young man, who kept glancing at the trail of blood in the front room. At the doorway, he stopped.
“That’s him.”
Ezekiel looked toward the man Serena had bitten.
“What?”
“He brought me here.”
The young man’s voice had gone flat.
His foot shifted.
Ezekiel put himself between them before the movement became anything else.
“We’re leaving.”
“He—”
“I heard you.”
The young man stared at him.
Ezekiel did not know what promise he could make.
Justice was too large a word for the room they stood in. He had no right to offer it as though he carried it in his pocket.
“Come outside,” he said. “Tell Crystal. We’ll make sure she knows.”
It was not enough.
After a moment, the young man followed anyway.
Serena returned for another search while Ezekiel remained at the entrance.
She found no more locked rooms with people inside.
There was a small office with drawers hanging open, a spilled wastebasket, and a warm cup on the desk. Someone had left quickly. Whether it was Rocko, she could not tell.
Beyond it stood the room of cases Mara had described.
One was open.
Foam cradled an empty space approximately the size of the weapon downstairs.
Serena did not touch the remaining cases.
She looked for photographs.
On a table beneath a lamp lay a thin folder. Most of its pages held numbers and writing she could read without understanding their purpose.
Then she found an image of a black guardian.
She went still.
The photograph showed it from the side, close enough to make out the overlapping plates at its throat. Behind it stood a carved lintel.
A rose with seven petals.
Serena touched the edge of the page.
Sabine used to complain that the mason had given the flower too many.
It was the servants’ entrance to Casa Val.
The image had been taken before the attack. Nothing was broken. A folded cloth rested on the low wall beside the door.
She remembered leaving it there.
“Serena?”
Ezekiel’s voice came from below.
She closed the folder.
“Coming.”
By the time she reached the street, distant sirens had begun to rise above the traffic.
Crystal was speaking into her phone. The woman with the blankets helped Lena into a car.
Big D had come with another vehicle.
He looked past Serena toward the damaged doorway.
“Rocko?”
“We didn’t find him,” Ezekiel said.
D started to speak, then looked at the people waiting beside the curb.
He shut his mouth and opened the rear door.
One of the rescued men would not get in.
Serena could hear Crystal trying to reassure him.
“Then don’t,” Ezekiel said.
She looked toward him.
He faced the man.
“You don’t have to get in that car.”
The man’s shoulders dropped a little.
“Can I call somebody?”
Crystal held out her phone.
He took it with both hands.
Serena stood beside Ezekiel, holding the folder against her chest.
Blood had dried along the side of her neck. Beneath it, the wound still stung.
He noticed.
“You’re hurt.”
“So are you.”
“I know.”
She looked at the patch on his sleeve.
For once, neither tried to make the observation smaller.
They did not go straight home.
Crystal took them to a place where Ezekiel’s arm could be examined again. Serena sat in the bathroom while he was being seen and cleaned her face with a damp cloth.
Without the blood, the woman in the mirror looked almost ordinary.
White skin. Orange eyes. A bruise fading beneath one cheekbone.
She pressed the cloth harder against her mouth.
The wound at her neck had begun to close, slowly enough to trouble her.
The weapon had done something more than tear the skin.
She set the thought aside before it could become certainty.
Outside, Ezekiel swore.
Someone told him to hold still.
Serena shut her eyes.
The man she had bitten had been breathing when she left him. She had made herself check. Whether he would remain alive, she did not know.
She remembered how long it had taken her to listen.
Ezekiel found her waiting beside the back door.
His arm had been freshly dressed.
“Ready?”
She nodded.
They reached the car before she spoke.
“I frightened you.”
He rested his hand on the roof.
“Yeah.”
“I warned you.”
“You did.”
The answer offered no argument for her to win.
Serena looked down at the folder.
After a moment, he asked, “Did you kill him?”
“He was alive when we left.”
“Is that what you meant to do?”
She could have said yes.
He had no way to prove otherwise.
“No,” she said.
Ezekiel watched her.
“I wanted him dead. Then I wanted his blood.” She swallowed. “For a little while, I did not care which came first.”
He looked away.
A door closed somewhere behind them.
Serena made herself continue.
“You spoke to me. I heard you before I stopped.”
“I know.”
“I am sorry.”
He rubbed his forehead with his good hand.
“I’m not asking you to pretend you’re human.”
She looked up.
“I wouldn’t know how to do that properly.”
A tired breath escaped him.
“No kidding.”
Then his expression grew serious again.
“But if we’re doing this together, I need to know you’ll hear me. Especially when there are other people around.”
“Yes.”
“And you need to tell me things before I find them out standing next to you.”
She nodded.
He glanced toward the building.
“You hungry now?”
The question surprised her.
“No.”
“Were you before we went?”
She hesitated.
“Yes.”
“Then start there next time.”
It was such an ordinary demand that she nearly cried.
Instead, she said, “I will.”
At home, Ezekiel put the kettle on.
Serena laid the folder on the table.
For several moments, she watched him move around the small kitchen. He was quieter than he had been that morning, and he did not stand as close when he passed her.
She let him have the space.
When he sat, she turned the photograph toward him.
“This is my home.”
He leaned forward.
The guardian occupied most of the frame.
“That thing was real?”
“Yes.”
He studied the stonework.
“Before the attack?”
“Yes.”
“How can you tell?”
She pointed to the folded cloth.
“I put that there.”
He looked from the photograph to her.
Serena touched the seven-petaled rose.
“They were watching us.”
He took a slow breath.
“Looks like it.”
She drew the page closer.
“Sabine would have seen someone standing there.”
“Maybe they didn’t take it from where it looks.”
She considered that.
There were too many things she did not understand about cameras, about the devices the men carried, about the world beyond the estate.
A picture did not tell her who had held the machine.
It told her that someone had been close enough.
“The man downstairs said he thought they missed one,” she said.
Ezekiel’s expression hardened.
“Meaning you?”
“I think so.”
“Then this place was connected.”
“At least he was.”
Ezekiel nodded.
They sat with that distinction for a while.
His phone vibrated on the table.
Crystal had sent a message.
Eight people out. The woman with the ankle was receiving care. Lena had spoken to Mara.
Ezekiel read the last line twice before turning the screen toward Serena.
She studied it.
“Eight,” she said.
“Yeah.”
She thought of the doors. Of the woman warning her to run. Of the sound that had reached her while she held a man by the throat.
Eight people had been inside.
Tonight they were somewhere else.
The number did not answer what had happened to her household. It did not bring Sabine back or tell her what she would do when she found the people who had taken her.
But it was something they had done that those people had not wanted.
She set the phone beside the photograph.
“Lena reached Mara.”
“Looks like.”
Serena nodded.
Ezekiel pushed the untouched mug toward her.
She wrapped her hands around it.
Across the table, he finally leaned back.
For that night, they left the photograph facedown.